A blog full of bits of historical information, comments & observations, photographs (old and new), oddball ramblings and other totally random stuff.

Saturday, December 27, 2014

WINTER DRAYS...

The squirrels were, quite simply, frantic before
our first snow; lots of last-minute gathering, storing and burying of nuts all
over my back lawn.

Now, after our first snows have
come and gone and we’ve got bare ground again, they’re working from caches in
hollows of trees along the property line that separates my land from my
neighbor’s. They’re also digging out individually buried nuts that they’ve
tucked a mere half-inch below the ground in my yard. I know they sniff them out
all winter long—they can even find them beneath a foot or more of snow, either
by smell or by some miraculous internal mapping system!

And now that the leaves are down and the
maples and oaks along my street are stark, I can see the drays hanging in the
branches—there’s lots of squirrel real estate in my neighborhood this year.

Built of twigs, leaves, grass
and even dried flower stalks, these winter drays, wedged in the crotches of
uppermost branches of the trees, are as much as thirty feet above ground. They
look like messy humps of brown, dead leaves (nothing fancy here) but they’re
wonderfully engineered: twigs and branches woven together, lined with leaves
and grass and even pine needles for warmth and comfort. The entrance is on the
underside (to keep out the rain and snow) facing away from the prevailing
winter winds.

Inside, there’s room for one or two North
American grays. They prefer to live alone, but during our cold winters, they
sometimes double up for warmth. There’s also a mating season in late
January/early February, so having larger quarters might be an enticement—goodness
knows a larger house would certainly impress me!

We have a healthy community of grays here in
my neighborhood. Lots of us have birdfeeders, and some of us have come to the
realization that we feed more squirrels than birds—squirrels are little
thieves, indeed, and professional acrobats when it comes to figuring out how to
get into our feeders. I’ve seen them leap, twist, dive out of trees onto
feeders, watched them hang upside down from wires and perches, even leap from
roofs and fences!

And when the supply of seed
runs low, they’ll let you know—they’ll even sit on the back porch and screech
at you to fill your feeders, those sassy little beggars!

At last!

In the early 1800s, five families settle on the Eastern River in Pittston, Maine. Together, they build a strong and lasting agricultural neighborhood based on New England values of community and reciprocity. Both fiction and social history, The Eastern flows through the experiences and truths we share with those who have lived before us.